Am I too fat to be a pastor?
First, why this question is relevant: After four months out of the pulpit, I have been in touch with District Superindendents. If there is a church in need of a part-time pastor, I would like to be considered.
Should the fact that I weigh 260 pounds at 6 feet tall keep me from the pulpit?
A pastor is supposed to be a model of Christian conduct and life. He or she needs to show discipline and honor God in all he or she does. Clearly, over eating and failing to exercise are not good stewardship of this body God has given me. Don’t I rob my family of money for other needs and rob the hungry by shoving another Quarter Pounder down my throat? Don’t I threaten to cut short the ministry I might do by damaging this body? Surely, all that calls into question my spiritual fitness and maturity.
Of course, I might offer counter arguments. My compulsive eating is part of who I am. I’ve fought it my entire adult life with little success. It is hard to find time to exercise. My flat feet make things such as running painful. Eating is not something I can’t just stop doing. It is necessary to live. If God did not want me to eat, why did he make food taste so good?
In the end, these are excuses. Those who supervise my ministry would have every right to call me to account if I tried to offer them. This body does not belong to me. I use it on behalf of God. What kind of sermon must I preach when I walk down the street?
I am a sinner. I need to repent. Thanks be to God for his mercy. Thanks be to God that he can use sinners to do his work.
I am a part-time local pastor serving 
The doctrine of original sin is surely more humbling to man than the opposite: And I know not what honour we can pay to God, if we think man came out of His hands in the condition wherein he is now.
Really! Overeating is a sin? How does carrying extra weight separate you from God?
Carrying extra weight is the outcome, not the sin. The sin includes or could be:
Sloth
Gluttony
Wasting resources (money and food)
Damaging the body (the temple of God)
Your man Thomas Aquinas wrote a fair bit on gluttony and sloth as sins.
And trying to defend these behaviors can lead to pride, self-justification, and even blasphemy (saying God does not care about what we do with our bodies).
chances in the UMC of that happening – zilch. Why? because the DS or whomever else might even have the gumption to do it is pretty likely to be overweight too, if my experience of annual conference sessions is any indicator. nobody wants to point out the splinter while dealing his own log. we are not a healthy lot, us clergy, on the whole.
Deciding that only “perfect” people could pastor churches defeats one of the purposes of church, namely the fellowship of the growing, learning and occasionally falling and flailing and failing. It is yet another example of “shooting the wounded” and propagating the church as an unsafe place to show pain and hurt to each other. Of course, we should practice healthy habits, and many of my Christian friends lead very healthy lifestyles, but some struggle with this. I refuse to discount the wisdom they may offer me as I walk my walk or rule them less than complete Christians just because they are fat.
I never said only perfect people can be pastors. And I did not say we should discount the wisdom of anyone.
I raised this topic for this very reason.
We have to be able to talk with each other about our faults and name them as faults. I am fat. And it is not something to ignore. It is a spiritual issue. If I choose to ignore it and deny it has spiritual dimensions, then I should be called to account because I am lying. And Christians should not lie.
I did not call anyone an incomplete Christian or say they should be ruled out. But gluttony is a sin. (I hold myself up as an offender and point at no one else.) If we cannot say that to each other, how will we ever speak in truth and love to each other about other sins?
Whoops, we may have talked past each other. I am all about having the church be a safe place where we can “go on to perfection” together. That includes calling each other to account for our actions. I get nervous when only the “pretty people”–the physically appealing, the socially adept–seem to be the only ones that are anointed “leaders.”
I too struggle with being undertall for my weight! I’ve lost about 20 lbs over the past year or so–it’s a fight to the finish.
Hope your Sunday was full of the Holy Spirit’s healing and power. Thank you for your blog which challenges me each time I read it!
Brother, I take this post seriously. And, I appreciate you sharing your struggle and questions. If you ever want to chat about this, please don’t hesitate to let me know. I would be happy to do so.
Blessings,
Dale
Thank you, Dale.
It sounds as if I need to say five Hail Mary’s, a couple of Our Father’s, and go on the Atkins diet.
Sorry about that flip comment above. It’s just….how can you be serious about this? I like fat people better than skinny people. They tend to be less enamoured with their bodies and yes, in my experience at least, they seem to have more fun. They also are less judgmental about the eating behavior of others. They probably spend less time staring into mirrors. What a relief! And what’s not to like about that? I don’t like being referred to as a sinner just because I carry more weight than the weight chart says I should. Let’s reserve “sin” for things that really do separate us from our Lord. That’s what I think we should do. And let us enjoy our doughnuts in peace.
Incidentally, my guy Aquinas is an intellectual and spiritual contributor to all steams of Christianity, including Methodism. He gets ignored more in some of them than in others, but the wisdom is still there for all to partake. Can I share a few titles with you?
Frank, you and I are both sinners, whether we eat those doughnuts or not. All fall short of the glory of God.
“If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness. If we claim we have not sinned, we make him out to be a liar and his word is not in us. (1 John 1:8-10)”
The skinny people obsessed with their body image are no less sinners. Their particular sins may be different than mine, but we are all sinners. Christ came to save us because we are sinners. Your old Baptist preacher surely told you that.
Did not mean to ignore Aquinas. Yes, he is a gift to the whole church.
When the church imposes restrictions like this, officially or unofficially, it loses the power to complain when private industry does the same thing. If the church is actually concerned with supporting the rights of employees, it has to recognize the rights of its own employees.
Anon, this may be a technicality that does not persuade you, but pastors are not employees of the churches they serve.
This isn’t about imposing restrictions, officially or otherwise. This is about doing our best to model what it means to strive for perfection. This isn’t even really about body image or weight. Spiritual and physical health have connections. If we claim openly as pastors that Christ can free us from the power of sin, then having self-discipline over what we consume and what quantity we consume is important . . . nothing destroys ministry like hypocrisy. And this does not just pertain to food – it pertains to what we consume of media, entertainment, material things in general or worldly attitudes about the human body, etc. The sins may be distinct – gluttony or lust or sloth, etc., but the solution is the same, breaking free from the power sin by abiding in the power of Christ.
It’s amazing how we talk past each other without trying.
(1) There is no debate about whether you, I, or Obama are sinners. We all fall into that group.
That’s not what I’m talking about.
(2) What I am talking about is using the concept of sin in a too loose way, i.e., using it to refer to what are comparatively minor “sins”. I believe that doing this dilutes the impact and therefore the meaning of the concept and Christ’s sacrifice.
(3) Hope the search is going well. Have you heard from a DS yet?
If there is a a continuum of greater and lesser sins, which ones are okay for a pastor – or any Christian – to indulge in? Why call them sins if they can be ignored?
Nothing concrete yet. A couple conversations about possible openings.
John, have you read “Why We Get Fat” by Gary Taubes? I think it will help you a bit. You may have some sin to deal with here but there is also something organic going on with chronically elevated insulin levels caused by most American diets. This chronically high insulin comes from highly processed carbohydrates and leads to excess hunger and fatigue. The nutritional industry knows this but is slow to overcome the intertia of the last 60 years of blaming fat people with gluttonly and sloth as the cause of that fat. Taubes is confronting this causality and shows how the hormone insulin takes your nutrients and stores them as fat. This actualy starves the body and cause you to either crave more food or just be fatigued. It will also lead to type II diabetes. At that point the nutritional industry no longer says you have a willpower problem and will refer you to an endocrinologist who will recommend lowering your carb intake. Too little too late by then.